Magic: The Gatheringhas just dropped the banhammer on two cards, with Strixhaven: School of Mages’ Expressive Iteration, and Battle For Baldur’s Gate’s White Plume Adventurer being barred from the powerful Legacy format.
Despite Legacy allowing cards from almost any released set, making it one of the highest-power ways of playing MTG, it has been completely upended by both cards – with White Plume Adventurer helping to cement initiative decks as a mainstay of Legacy, despite only being introduced in 2022.
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In the announcement published onthe official MTG site, Wizards explained the decisions behind the bans. Expressive Iteration,which is also banned in Pioneer, has largely powered blue/red Izzet Delver decks thanks to how quickly it can sift through your deck to find the cards you need. While there were other candidates for banning, including Dragon Rage’s Channeler and Murktide Regent, it was decided that Expressive Iteration is too “generally strong” to not be the one booted from the format.
As for White Plume Adventurer, Wizards admitted that Battle for Baldur’s Gate’sinitiative mechanichas had “a large impact on the Legacy format”, quickly becoming its second most-popular deck. White Plume Adventurer is the cheapest creature to grant you the initiative, making its ban more of a way to slow initiative down than completely dismantle the archetype.
Wizards did point out that Izzet Delver and Initiative decks are “holding each other in check”, while also preventing other decks from gaining a decent foothold in the Legacy meta. The only other decks that are currently even close to either deck are five-colour reanimator decks and white/blue/black Cephalid Illusionist decks. This may not be the only bans focused on restoring Legacy’s balance to come, as Wizards says it will “evaluate further changes if needed”.
As for other formats, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and Vintage were all described as being in healthy places, despite the latter seeing a similar boom in initiative decks to Legacy. Vintage is a much, much higher-power format though, with one of the smallest banlists in the entire game, meaning it has more tools to deal with initiative, and is slower to adopt new dominant decks that would warp other formats.
